


Far Too Many Bats

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, I Can't Stress Enough That the Bats Are Not Involved in the Banging, Light Dom/sub, M/M, More Like Bat/Comfort Amirite, Power Dynamics, Some Anxiety Stuff, mild disassociation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:04:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: Next thing he knows, Shane’s kneeling in front of him at the side of the bed, forcing uncomfortable eye contact and smiling uncertainly. His hair’s wet and he smells good from the shower, spicy black pepper and coriander thanks to that fancy body wash he seems to use only when he travels.“Your pupils are still dilated,” Shane says. “Did you do hard drugs when I wasn’t looking, or is this some kind of lasting bat-related trauma that you’re going to need therapy for when we get back to L.A.?”“The batter,” Ryan says. “Uh. The latter. I’ll put it on BuzzFeed’s tab.”Or: Following a harrowing experience filming at Yuma Territorial Prison, Ryan's desperate to find a way to stop thinking about bats (hearing bats, smelling bats...). Shane has some ideas because he is a helpful problem-solving sort of person.





	Far Too Many Bats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> For TheseusInTheMaze, who put a bee (lol) in my bonnet about Shane giving head and some light kink stuff (it is indeed pretty mild). To facilitate this I present a new, very specific sub-genre of hurt/comfort: bat/comfort. This is set immediately following the Supernatural S5 ep The Terrors of Yuma Territorial Prison, in which there were, as you will recall, Far Too Many Bats. 
> 
> “There are _[laughing]_ so many bats in this room…Bats sometimes carry rabies, that’s a thing I’m afraid of. Oh, that one was low. That was a low one. Now they’re getting cocky. _[chuckling uneasily]_ Okay, guys.”—Shane Madej, 2018
> 
> “I think I’m blacking out right now, I don’t think I’m going to remember this moment. There’s so much fear inside of me that I’ve lost the ability to feel. I think I’m going to cry. Oh my god, that bat is huge, ooh, oohhhh, oohh-hooooo!”—Ryan Bergara, 2018

*

“How was it?” Shane asks, laughing. “You did it! It’s quite taxing, isn’t it?” He keeps talking, waiting for Ryan to catch his breath enough to contribute.

“Shh,” Ryan says, bent over double, shaking his head. “I c—I can’t—”

“Right?”

“My heart’s beating so fast.” Ryan’s huffing and puffing like he just ran a marathon, but he can’t get his adrenaline down enough to stop. He should stand up straight, but some instinct is telling him to keep low, to avoid the swooping. “That? Was the _worst_.”

“I know!” Shane’s still laughing, but it’s a helpless, hollow, what-the-fuck sort of laugh.

“I’m just overwhelmed with emotion right now. I’m, god, I think I’m crying a little.” Ryan wipes his hands over his eyes and they come away wet.

“Yeah, it’s quite a lot to deal with,” Shane agrees, but Ryan barely hears him.

*

 

Ryan doesn’t fully come back to his body until they’re halfway back to the hotel, which is awkward because he’s the one driving the car.

It’s sort of like when he drives to work really, really exhausted; he gets in the car and then it’s half an hour later and he’s at work, with no memory of how he got there. Only in this case he’s sliding into their rental outside Yuma Territorial Prison, and then suddenly he blinks and he’s behind the wheel on a busy road and Shane’s tapping him hard on the kneecap and saying his name repeatedly. 

“Ryan, your light’s green,” he says, and Ryan can only _just_ hear him over the flapping and clicking noises still echoing in his head.

It’s like he’s in a sort of full-body bat-induced fog, reduced to nothing more than a pile of quivering flesh that vaguely resembles a Ryan-shaped person. His brain’s turned to guano-covered mush.

“Right,” he says, and hits the accelerator so hard Shane goes flying back into his headrest a little. “Shit, sorry, my b.”

Ryan can feel Shane watching him, and he looks over to give him a reassuring smile that he can’t quite manage. He suspects his features must arrange themselves into a feral sort of grimace instead, because Shane recoils in response. Honestly, Shane’s eyes are a little glassy too, and his hands are gripping the armrests so tightly that his knuckles are white, so Ryan suspects Shane’s right there with him for once.

“Drinks?” TJ asks brightly when they pull into the hotel parking lot. They had to circle the block twice because Ryan kept missing the turn-in for the Holiday Inn Express.

“Nuh,” Ryan says, attempting to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Uh…nah. I’m sleeped, time for pooping. Um, no, wait, that’s—”

“We’re very tired, we aren’t fit to be around other humans, and we’d like to go up to the room,” Shane translates. “We’ve just been through an ordeal and I don’t think drinking would be the best idea.”

“Okay, it wasn’t ‘Nam, let’s take the drama down a notch,” TJ says. “Anyway, a drink might relax you.”

“No offense, but you weren’t there, Teej,” Shane says. “I think Ryan would drink himself into a coma if we let him get near booze right now. I’m going to take him up to the room and stick him in a brightly-lit corner with some Lakers highlights and a room service cheeseburger. Reboot the ‘ol system. Could take a while.”

“Fair enough,” TJ says, shaking his head.

Devon lays her hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “You’re okay, right, Ryan? Just tired? You don’t need, like, medical attent—”

“I’m _fine_ , Jesus,” Ryan says, cutting her off. It comes out shorter and snappier than he intended. Devon’s face falls a little and Shane’s hand lands heavy on his neck, steering him through the automatic doors at the hotel entrance.

“Okay, bud, time for bed,” he says. “Long day. _Dismal_ bat-to-ghost ratio on this one.”

Ryan keeps rubbing his nose. It’s starting to feel sore and raw, but he can’t help it. He’s still got that terrible smell burning in his nostrils, musty dampness and rot and ammonia from the fucking _haunted bat prison_ he’s just left.

Another blink and he’s in the hotel room, sitting on the edge of his bed, or at least on the bed that he thinks is his bed. At any rate it’s his bed now, because he doesn’t plan on moving from it until morning. He’s colonized the bed.

Shane’s talking in the background, but when Ryan looks over he’s on the phone placing an order for room service, two burgers with fries and a chocolate brownie with ice cream.

“It’ll just melt, man, room service ice cream’s a joke,” he tells Shane, but Shane flaps his hand at him to shut him up and says an artificially-bright thank you to the person taking the order.

“If I say you’re gonna eat ice cream, you’re gonna eat ice cream,” Shane says, pointing a long finger in his direction after hanging up. “I’m taking a shower. The food shouldn’t be here for another half an hour, but there’s a lot of bat shit in my hair so, you know. If someone knocks on the door, answer it.”

Hah, bat shit. Ryan starts laughing, because he’s always wondered where the expression _batshit insane_ came from, and now he knows. He knows now from firsthand experience that it comes from kneeling in a prison cell covered in actual bat droppings for ten minutes while two dozen bats take turns dive-bombing your head. It’s what you are when you come out the other side of that experience: you’re batshit crazy.

He must still be laughing, because Shane just sort of starts backing out of the room and into the bathroom. He’s still giggling when the door clicks shut and he hears the water turn on, and then things go foggy and flappy again for a while.

*

Next thing he knows, Shane’s kneeling in front of him at the side of the bed, forcing uncomfortable eye contact and smiling uncertainly. His hair’s wet and he smells good from the shower, spicy black pepper and coriander thanks to that fancy body wash he seems to use only when he travels. Ryan always steals some when Shane leaves it in the shower, and he leans into the smell now because it’s strong enough to temporarily overwhelm the smell of bat.

“Your pupils are still dilated,” Shane says. “Did you do hard drugs when I wasn’t looking, or is this some kind of lasting bat-related trauma that you’re going to need therapy for when we get back to L.A.?”

“The batter,” Ryan says. “Uh. The latter. I’ll put it on BuzzFeed’s tab.”

“Right,” Shane says. “Well, we’ve still got at least ten minutes until the food gets here, so why don’t you—um, the shower was really good. You should take one. A shower. It gets some of the…bat out.”

“I’m good here,” Ryan says. Moving feels like a lot of work at present, and also he’s found a very nice corner of the room with high ceilings and zero objects above his head. Which is more than he can say for the shower.

Shane prods at the side of his head very gently. “You’ve got bat poo on you,” he says. “And as long as you’re covered in bat poo, you’re going to keep smelling it.”

And then another blink, and Ryan’s standing in the shower under the hot spray, covering himself with liberal amounts of Shane’s bodywash. He has no memory of getting up and taking his clothes off and putting himself in the shower, but he’s pretty sure he did so. A solid ninety percent sure, which is still ten percent less sure than is optimal but feels good enough for now.

He starts to methodically wash himself from head to toe. It smells great in the shower from all the bodywashes and soaps and shampoos, and it’s steamy-hot, and the patter of the water on his head drowns out the echoed remnants of bat sounds that are still lurking between his ears.

It feels so great that he must stay in the shower a long time, because the water goes lukewarm around him and he uses the entire little shampoo bottle that the hotel provided washing his hair anywhere between two and five times. He looks down and his whole body’s lobster-red.

Shane knocks on the door. “Ryan, food’s here. Are you still alive?”                                                                                                                                             

“Be right there,” Ryan says, but he doesn’t move to turn the water off. It’s very cold now.

Suddenly Shane’s hand is there, turning the water off. He yelps when he gets a hand under the cold spray and Ryan jumps; he hadn’t even heard the door open.

“Ryan, it’s been twenty-five minutes. Seriously, are you okay?”

Ryan starts shivering the moment the air hits him, and Shane shoves his hand back in with a dry towel. “Dude, I will carry you bodily out of this shower if I have to, but at least do us both a favor and cover your bits first. I want better for us than that.”

The sudden realization that Ryan’s very naked and very wet and Shane is right there on the other side of the shower curtain, threatening to _move_ the shower curtain, lights a fire under Ryan’s ass. He scurries to rub himself dry, hissing when the towel hits skin he’s already scrubbed half to death with the washcloth.

When he’s dry he sticks his head out of the shower, but Shane has vacated the bathroom. Ryan’s sweats are folded up on the counter, carefully kept clear of the small lake he managed to create on the bathroom floor, and he slides into them gratefully. There’s no underwear there, and Ryan has an uncomfortable moment where he has to consider whether Shane _knows_ he doesn’t sleep in it or whether Shane just didn’t feel like pawing through his boxer-briefs.

He tosses the towel over his head, rubbing at his hair, and goes back out into the room. When he opens the door he’s hit with a puff of cool climate-controlled air, and he can practically feel all his pores snap shut.

“The ice cream melted,” Shane says, looking up from his cheeseburger. He gives Ryan an up-and-down appraising look, as if to ascertain that he’s not going to fall over faint at any moment, and then nods once in apparent satisfaction.

“I told you so.”

“Well I hadn’t counted on you trying to drown yourself,” Shane says. “An error on my part. You sit. You eat burger. Burger nourish Ryan.”

Ryan grabs the other tray and sits down on the bed. He must’ve been on Shane’s bed before, because this other one’s got his laptop on it. It’s right next to the giant floor-to-ceiling window, which he doesn’t love, but that’s life on the road.

He systematically plows his way through the burger and fries. It doesn’t taste like much—room service burgers are rarely much to write home in the best of times, and this is not the best of times—but the calories do him good. After that he drinks the ice cream, because he’s not proud, and splits the brownie with Shane. He finally feels better enough to make conversation.

“How are you so…?” Ryan asks, gesturing with his hand at Shane. Shane’s got a mouthful of brownie, and he holds up a finger as he finishes chewing.

“How am I so what?”

“How are you so _fine_? That was…tonight was harrowing. I’m harrowed.”

“It was a lot of bats,” Shane agrees. “It was too many bats. I’m not telling you how to do your job, but maybe next season we aim for fewer bats and more luxury hotels in fun party cities.”

“You’re the one who wanted to be a cowboy,” Ryan says. “Seriously, though, are you a robot? This whole blasé and disaffected thing is fine when it’s a schtick for the camera, but it’s starting to freak me out.”

“Your brain’s an unreliable narrator, Ryan,” Shane says, running the last of his fries through what’s left of the melted ice cream.

“Meaning?”

Shane shakes his head. He uncaps the water bottle by his bed and downs most of it in one go, and Ryan watches his throat as he swallows. Then he realizes he’s watching and looks away. Shane’s sleep pants are just a little too short for him; an inch or two of skin above his ankles peeks out the bottom, and Ryan fixes his attention on that instead.

“Meaning I’m not fine,” Shane says. “It’s just that my version of not-fine barely registers next to your version of not-fine, so you can’t see it.”

“ _Meaning_?”

“Meaning fuck bats.” And then Shane shudders. It’s just a little crack in his armor, but it’s enough to make Ryan look at him more closely, to see past the cheerfully steadfast disposition and the wry one-liners to the hunch of his shoulders and the vulnerable curl of his still-damp neck.

“Oh shit,” Ryan says, realizing. “You were scared too. You’re _still_ scared.”

“Scared is a strong—” Shane starts. “I’m rattled. I just hide it better.”

“It was _so many bats_ ,” Ryan says with emphasis. “How were—why do we do this to ourselves?”

“The fans will love it,” Shane says. “Watching you shit your pants in terror is their very favorite thing. It’ll be a great end to the ep, and then you’ll feel like it was worth it even if you don’t right now.”

It’s a huge relief to know that Shane was affected by their unholy bat encounter too. So often Ryan comes out of these places scared, and feeling downright stupid about being scared. Shane doesn’t rub it in, but his lowkey nature is usually enough to make the shame glow a little hotter inside Ryan at the comparison. It’s nice to know that for once Shane was freaked out too.

It would have been better if it was because of a ghost, of course, but beggars can’t be choosers. Ryan will take what he can get.

“I wish I could hide it as well as you,” Ryan says. “I was practically catatonic. It was, it was like I blacked out and I didn’t even know where I was until we were almost back to the hotel. My hands were numb.”

“Ryan, you were _driving_ ,” Shane says, alarmed.  

“I just kept hearing the squeaking, and the flapping noises,” Ryan says, remembering, and it makes him feel a little like crying all over again. “And the—ugh, the wind from their wings right by your face.”

“Try being tall,” Shane adds with a grimace. “There was nowhere for me to hide.”

“They probably thought you were their roost.” Ryan can’t help but smile at that. “They saw all that hair on top of your giant long tree body and they were like, yep, home sweet home.”

“Ugh,” Shane says. He unfurls himself from the bed to go put their trays in the hallway for hotel staff to pick up. “Okay, I think we should try to sleep. Our flight’s not that early tomorrow, but we should try to check out by ten.”

“Sounds good,” Ryan says. He’s very tired all of a sudden, and his neck and back are stiff from holding himself unnaturally still. Sleep sounds great.

*

Only Ryan can’t sleep.

Whenever he closes his eyes he hears the flapping again, and he didn’t bring his headphones on this trip, which was a huge mistake he won’t be making again.

There’s also the problem of the window. Ryan thinks that if he turns his head just so, he can see what looks like a face pressing in on the glass, peering at him. He knows it’s not a face. He knows it’s just a trick of the light, something about the moon’s reflection, just like he knows the flapping’s in his head and there aren’t any bats in this room right now. But just because he knows it doesn’t mean he _believes_ it.

“Shane?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you asleep?”

“No,” Shane says. “I’m not asleep.”

“Do you hear that?” Ryan asks. He knows it’s stupid to ask, but he just has to make sure. He has to make sure it’s in his head.

“Do I hear what?

“Never mind.”

What Ryan really wants is to go for a long run, to just run himself out until he’s too tired to think. He wants to go to the gym and lift until his arms and his back and his shoulders are screaming, but the hotel gym closed at ten and it’s nearly midnight now. He’d like to move himself numb, until there’s no more room inside him for irrational fears or fresh horrifying memories or anything but bone-tiredness.

Without thinking about it, he rolls out of bed. He lowers himself to the floor between the two beds and starts tossing out bicycle crunches. He’ll do them until his abs hurt, and then he’ll do as many push-ups, and then he’ll be able to sleep.

He’s done maybe twenty crunches and he’s just starting to breathe heavy and feel his mind start to go blank when Shane’s lamp clicks on.

Shane leans over the side of the bed to look down at him.

“Hey Ryan? Whacha doin’?”

“Crunches,” Ryan grunts.

“Mmm,” Shane agrees, like he can see that. “Why, though?”

Ryan does another thirty, and when his core screams at him he falls flat on his back, panting. “Because the gym’s closed. They make me feel better.”

He flips over onto his stomach and starts doing tricep push-ups, elbows tucked close to his ribs, hands in a triangle in front of his chest. He’s facing away from the head of the beds now, but he can feel Shane’s eyes on him, watching. It makes him want to show off a little, and he does at least ten more than he usually would before collapsing.

“Do they make you feel better, or do they make you feel _less_?”

“Yep,” Ryan says when he gets his breath back. It isn’t quite an answer, but it’s also the only answer.

Shane hums, but he doesn’t say anything more. He waits for Ryan to climb back in his bed—Ryan can feel Shane’s eyes on his back the whole way—and then he turns the lamp off again.

*

It’s been half an hour, according to the clock glowing on the table between the two beds. Ryan knows because he’s facing the clock, which is preferable to facing the giant window that might or might not have a face in it (but it doesn’t, it definitely does not).

He thinks about getting up and getting his phone, but it’s charging all the way across the room and without his headphones he’d just scroll endlessly through social media anyway.

“Shane, are you still awake?”

“No,” Shane says, but he doesn’t sound like he usually sounds when Ryan rouses him from sleep. There’s no trace of that resigned croak. He sounds alert, and Ryan wonders if Shane’s spent the last half hour the same way he has, staring at neon numbers in the dark and wishing he had a mild sedative. 

“Are you thinking about the bats?”

“Little bit, yeah.”

“Okay, what if—can I…? Um, maybe.”

Ryan can hear Shane rustling around on the other bed, fluffing his resolutely un-fluffable hotel pillow.

“What if, can you, maybe what, Ryan?”

“Can I come sleep over there?”

Ryan feels _so_ stupid asking. He feels like a stupid, scared kid, but he knows it will help. If he’s further away from the window—if he knows there’s someone right there—

“Okay,” Shane says. He doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t make a big thing of it. He doesn’t sigh like it’s a hardship, trying to keep up with Ryan’s neuroses. He just says _okay_ and he shifts over to the far side of his bed, making room for Ryan to clamber into the warm spot he made.

The lovely thing about Shane’s fundamental chillness is that it extends to all things. As much it annoys Ryan, he’s also the beneficiary of it just as often; like now, when he needs to not be alone, when he needs something steady. He wouldn’t ask just anybody.

Ryan arranges himself in bed, trying to get comfortable. Shane’s facing the wall, so he thinks it’s okay if he faces the wall too, so he won’t see the window or the clock.

“I stole some of your body wash,” he says by way of apology. This close he’s sure Shane can tell.

“Do you always do that?” Shane asks.

“What, steal your body wash? Actually, yeah, I—”

“No, I don’t care about that. Why do you think I leave it in the shower when I’m done with it? No, I mean, do you always punish your body for whatever dumb shit your brain’s doing?” Shane asks shrewdly. “The crunches and stuff.”

Ryan can see the back of his neck, the slope of his shoulders, but he can’t read anything in them.

“Sometimes,” he says. “It feels good. I can either be in my head or I can be in my body, but usually not both. I like the second one a lot better.”

“Is that why you go to the gym so much?”

“Partly,” Ryan accedes. “It’s why I do everything so much. It’s why I eat so much, and why I work so much, and why I’ve always got a movie playing or music on. Physical stuff, working out and…and other stuff, it’s the best for that.”

“Other stuff?” Shane flips onto his back, and Ryan can just make out his profile in the dark, the exaggerated strong line of his nose, the chin and jaw disappearing into neck.

“You _know_ ,” Ryan says, embarrassed. “Don’t make me say it, man.”

Shane looks over at him then—a flash of white eye, the most ancient telltale sign of an animal in the dark, which unlocks a prey instinct deep in Ryan and sends a brief flutter of panic and excitement through his whole body.

“Right,” Shane says, laughing low. “Of course. Well, there’s an idea.”

“I—what?”

“You can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I can think of some things we could be doing that would not allow us any room whatsoever to be thinking about bats.”

Ryan must be more exhausted than he realized, because he could swear that Shane’s suggesting—that he’s implying they should—that they might—

“Uh,” Ryan says. That’s it, just “Uhhh.”

Shane laughs at him again.

*

“Uh,” Ryan says a third time.

“Oh no, did I break your brain?” Shane asks. “Should I try turning you off and then back on again?”

There’s something sly in his voice, something _not-Shane_ , something not-Shane as Ryan knows Shane. Something strange and out of context, a version of him that Ryan hasn’t had reason to know yet, and it sends ASMR-like tingles up his arms and back down his spine. It sounds an awful lot like a come-on, and it feels an awful lot like it’s going to get his dick hard.

“No,” Ryan says, and his voice betrays him by cracking. “No, I’m, um, on. Already.”

“It doesn’t have to be a whole thing,” Shane says. “It can just be two people who had a stressful day letting off some steam so they can fall asleep. That’s a—people do that, I’m told.”

“People do,” Ryan agrees. It’s not something _they’ve_ ever done, but then again until tonight they’ve never experienced torture-by-bats before either, so there’s a first time for everything. It’s possible that his higher brain function and decision-making skills are impaired. It’s possible that someone who just hours ago was struggling to stop showering shouldn’t be making this sort of call.

Then again, he’s tired of thinking. He’d like to distract his brain with something shiny and new for a while, and sex is about the most fun way to do it. Also, he’s curious about this new _not-Shane_ Shane; it hadn’t occurred to Ryan until right this very moment that as well as he knows this guy next to him, there’s still a lot he doesn’t know.

“Well, let’s find out if,” Shane starts, but he doesn’t bother to finish the thought. Instead he rolls over and shuffles in until he’s pressed up against Ryan’s side. Before Ryan has much opportunity to react, Shane’s kissing him. He starts gentle, lazy, like he doesn’t much care one way or the other if it ever turns into anything more than a kiss.

It’s not a bad kiss, but it’s so fundamentally ridiculous to be lying here in a hotel bed kissing _Shane_ while bats flap in his ears that Ryan laughs directly into Shane’s mouth.

“Ryan, I feel like you’re not taking this seriously,” Shane says, tucking his head into the crook of Ryan’s neck. Ryan can feel the smile there.

“Well, no, you just kissed me,” Ryan says, which should be explanation enough. “With your own mouth.”

“Was I supposed to use someone else’s?” Shane asks, bemused. “Just go knock on Teej’s door real quick and be like, hey, Teej, can I borrow your mouth for a few minutes? It’s for smooching.”

He leans back in again, and this time goes smoother because Ryan’s ready for it. It also goes smoother because Shane’s less gentle, more demanding from the get-go, and there’s something in the firmer press of his mouth that’s intriguing. He nips at Ryan’s bottom lip, barely on the right side of too rough, and that’s intriguing too. Ryan experiences a little jolt of nerves, exactly like when he’s up late reading details of some case that simultaneously horrifies and thrills him.

“Hm,” Ryan mumbles, considering, no longer laughing. Shane takes advantage of his open mouth to work a bit of tongue action in there, and Ryan doesn’t hate it. Ryan doesn’t hate it a lot.

Perhaps the best thing about it—and this sounds bad, but he doesn’t mean it in a bad way—is that Shane’s got it _handled_. Ryan doesn’t have to think about what to do next, where to move his hands or what to do with his mouth, because as soon as he starts to overthink Shane surprises him with some new physical sensation that sends him right back to himself. He’s a solid step and a half ahead the whole time, which gives Ryan permission to not worry about it.

Shane’s on top of him now, almost more limb than Ryan knows what to do with, so it’s lucky Shane doesn’t seem to be expecting anything in particular from him.

“I wonder if—what about—” Shane mutters, more to himself than to Ryan. He winds his hand into Ryan’s hair at the nape of his neck, gets a firm grip, and tugs hard.

“Hnngh,” Ryan says, and it comes out exactly at the midpoint between a moan of pleasure and an expression of pain. What’s really strange, though, is that abruptly the flapping noise in his ears stops, replaced with the sound of Shane’s breath catching as he shifts his hips down against Ryan’s dick.

“Oh, interesting,” Shane says, grinding down again like he’s conducting a damn science experiment and Ryan’s the fruit fly under his microscope. He tugs Ryan’s hair again. Ryan keens, his dick pulses, and Shane laughs almost meanly in his ear. “Is this an avenue you’ve explored for the brain stuff?”

“Is what an avenue?”

Ryan thinks he knows what Shane’s asking, actually, but he really wants to see what Shane will do if he plays dumb about it. There’s nothing that riles Shane up on set as much as when Ryan presents some stupid-ass theory with barefaced, wide-eyed sincerity, and he pastes that exact expression on his face now for maximum impact.

What Shane does is grab Ryan’s arms, haul them over his head, and pin them there. Shane’s not as strong as Ryan—Ryan could throw him off easy, if he really wanted to, which he doesn’t—but his hands are huge and they easily encircle Ryan’s wrists and hold him firm. Ryan tests them, shifting his arms, and Shane’s grip tightens and he twists so Ryan’s just a little uncomfortable around the shoulders.

“I think I get just about enough bullshit out of you during filming,” Shane says. “Off camera we should endeavor to be forthcoming with each other, don’t you agree?”

His tone is mild, almost formal, but there’s still something in it. Ryan wants to poke at it again, but maybe not right this moment.

“Not really,” Ryan says, answering his earlier question. “It’s not—I’m not opposed, it just hasn’t really come up. Why, is that…do you…?”

“Sometimes. It seems like, I don’t know. People like you, people who get anxious, people who have to make a lot of decisions in their day-to-day lives…it can be nice to hand that responsibility over for a while, I find.”

Shane shifts again on top of him, possibly on purpose or possibly just to get comfortable. Either way he rubs against Ryan’s hard-on again, leaving Ryan hissing and bucking up at the contact. Shane beams down at him, loosening his grip on Ryan’s left wrist to pet his hair almost tenderly. “Your call,” he says.

This whole thing’s already completely crazy, so what’s one more thing? It’s just the cherry on top of an already insane few hours. He’s undeniably interested in the way Shane’s looking at him, sharp and intent. For the first time all day his brain is quiet.

“Okay,” Ryan says. “What do I, like, call you? What do I say if I want you to stop doing something?”

Shane looks down at him, head cocked, a crooked smile on his face. In that moment he’s just Shane again, Ryan’s Shane, comfortable and familiar. “You can say, _please stop doing that thing_ , or _I don’t like that._ And you can call me Shane.”

That seems easy enough. Ryan can handle that. He’s not sure he can do the whole sir thing, the props and the whole business, at least not when it is fragile and uncertain. He still wants it to be _them_.

“Sounds good,” he agrees.

“‘Shane,’ you can say,” Shane starts, “You can say, ‘Shane, that is far too many bats’ and I will respect your boundaries.”

*

“Take off your sweats,” Shane says, sliding off him. He doesn’t order it, exactly. He just says it, firm, like a fact, like Ryan is already in the process of taking off his sweats even before he is.

“I—okay, but I’m not wearing anything under them, so. Just so you know.”

“Yeah, I could tell.” Shane waggles his eyebrows. “Also I put you in those sweats, so if I wanted you to be wearing underwear right now you’d be wearing it.”

That’s one question answered, then, and Ryan’s face burns bright red with the knowledge that Shane had thought about this, even in the abstract. That he’d rooted through Ryan’s suitcase and made the conscious decision to leave Ryan a soft, worn pair of sweats and nothing else. He’d had Ryan’s comfort in mind, but maybe a bit of self-interest too.

Shane delivers a slap to his thigh, not hard enough to hurt, just a rebuke. Ryan scrambles to pull his pants down, flushing only a little bit as he kicks them off the side of the bed and onto the floor.

“Ryan, I know you’re an irredeemable slob, but we’re guests in this hotel. Are you just gonna fling your shit everywhere?”

Ryan really wants to stick out his tongue, or reply with a bratty _yes, I am_ , but as soon as Shane says it Ryan also feels embarrassed for having done it. He feels too eager, and that he’s given his eagerness away in his haste to be naked.

“Maybe I will,” he says.

“I’d like you to pick those up and fold them and put them on your bed, please,” Shane says. “And then turn on the lamp and come sit on the edge of this bed, where I can see you.”  

Ryan complies. The idea that Shane would even _want_ to look at him like that, that he would want to be looked at by Shane, is still so fresh that it’s a shock to his system. He’s self-conscious of everything as he folds up his sweats: the flushed hardness of his cock, his un-styled post-shower hair, the fact that he smells like Shane’s body wash.

When he clicks the lamp on he sees Shane’s fully-lit face for the first time since this night spiraled in an unexpected direction. Shane smiles at him, sweet and reassuring, just like he’s done a million times over on location when he thinks the camera’s not looking, and just like then it gives Ryan courage.

He sits on the edge of the bed and Shane comes around to stand in front of him. The height difference means Ryan’s looking right at Shane’s bare stomach, at the sparse hair trailing down his chest and under his belly-button and disappearing into his pjs. Shane’s hard too. Ryan wants to reach out and touch him through the flannel, but he’s dimly aware that he hasn’t been invited to do so yet.

“Good,” Shane says, and it makes Ryan feel warm and satisfied. He’s always liked this, he knows; the knowledge that people are pleased with him, that he’s done well. You don’t try this hard if you’re indifferent to the opinions of others.

“What’re you gonna…” Ryan starts, and then he trails off when Shane runs his hand through Ryan’s hair again, tugging lightly on the way out.

“You like the burn so much, let’s see if those arms are just for show or what,” Shane says. “Put your hands behind your head. You’re going to lace your fingers together and keep them there until you come, and you’re not going to come until I say you can.”

“Holy shit.” Ryan giggles nervously. It’s still so wild to hear someone saying these things, and in particular to hear Shane saying them. He knows people do this, and much more intense things besides, but still. It’s _Shane_.

“Holy shit is right, buddy,” Shane says. “Arms up. Let’s see those pits.”

And then he’s sliding to his knees in front of Ryan for the second time that night.

*

It’s the most bats a thing can be, without being too many bats.

Ryan’s got his arms behind his head, hands locked around the back of his skull, elbows out.  In other circumstances he’d be able to hold this position for a long time without feeling it, but he has only recently done far too many tricep push-ups and there’s already a slight ache there.

It’s hard to focus on the ache in his arms, though. Not when Shane’s between his legs, hands on either thigh to keep them spread wide, licking slow wet stripes up the length of his dick. He mouths around the head, presses his tongue into the slit and then down, and Ryan’s left arm spasms.

“Keep ‘em up,” Shane warns. His breath ghosts over wet skin and Ryan shivers.

“What happens if I move?” Ryan asks, curious. “Or if I, um—before you say I can?”

He’s never done this before, but he’s always wondered about consequences. Surely it’s all just sort of an illusion, kept running by desire and everybody’s best intentions.

“Nothing happens,” Shane says, surprised. He nuzzles and bites at Ryan’s thigh and Ryan makes himself look down; he’s been avoiding it so far, afraid it’ll be too much. Shane’s looking up at him with one eyebrow raised. “But you’ll know you messed up, and isn’t that way worse than anything I could do or say to you?”  

That motherfucker. He knows Ryan too well. He knows that nobody expects more from Ryan than Ryan, and that nobody can hurt Ryan like Ryan, and that Ryan will hold his fucking arms up until they fall off.

“Right, okay.”

Shane gets serious then, swallowing Ryan down almost to the hilt. He’s done this before, clearly, and Ryan’s going to be nosy as hell about that later. For now he just sits there, his back ramrod straight, his arms starting to shake, abs clenching to keep him perched on the exact edge of the bed, and he takes it.

Shane gets him close, close enough that he’s panting and cursing, and then he pulls back. He dips down to lick at Ryan’s balls, takes them in his mouth one at a time for a gentle, exploratory roll. It feels so good that it pulls a noise from Ryan he didn’t expect, more like a sob than anything.

Shane’s mouth moves lower, then, and lower, into unexplored territory, and—and—it’s too good, it’s too scary, Ryan’s not sure—he doesn’t—

“Shane, I can’t,” he says weakly, well aware that his dick is telling him he can and he _should_. “Not—Shane, it’s too many bats.”

Shane pulls back at once, onto his heels, so no part of him is touching any part of Ryan except his hands on Ryan’s legs.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, breathing. “It’s not that it’s bad, I just wasn’t ready, and this is already a…a lot,” he says apologetically. He doesn’t love feeling like a buzzkill, but Shane’s already pressing kisses to the inside of his thigh like he’s not bothered.

“Thanks for telling me. You want to stop?” Shane asks. “Take a break, get some water? Or we can just be done, this isn’t—”

“No,” Ryan says, a little sharp. He doesn’t want to stop, he wants to come. He wants to keep his arms up.

Shane laughs softly—at Ryan’s determination, at his need, Ryan’s not sure. He bends down to take Ryan’s dick in his mouth again, and this time he’s in it to win it. He’s good with his mouth, but he’s better still with Ryan; he always seems to know when something’s too good, when Ryan’s getting too close, and he switches it up. It’s amazing and infuriating both.

He works Ryan over until Ryan’s arms are trembling with the effort of staying behind his head. Ryan’s going to feel them tomorrow, every time he lifts his suitcase or raises his arms above his head, and he’s going to know why they hurt.

“How’s the weather up there?” Shane asks, checking in. His mouth’s red and slick and Ryan can only look at him quickly before rolling his eyes back up to the ceiling.

“I’m close,” he says. “Dude, I’ve _been_ close, please.”

“Not what I meant,” Shane says. “No, how’s the noggin?”

“Good, great, perfect,” Ryan says, biting back a moan when Shane swallows him down, tongue running up the underside. “Oh fuck, I…it’s quiet.”

He really only has space for how his body feels, for the ache of his arms and the quiver of his stomach muscles and the hot, slick friction of Shane’s mouth. It’s like the best workout ever, and it’s made the rest of the world go silent around them. The control is good too, the intense focus he’s had to put on not coming when he could’ve done so three times over by now. It’s almost like meditation, if getting your dick sucked can be meditative.

“Mine too,” Shane says. “Okay, Ryan, any time you want to come in my mouth it’s chill with me.”

“Oh, well, if it’s _chill_ ,” Ryan says, but the relief of it almost makes him topple over.

Then Shane gags and coughs around him, sloppy on purpose like he can’t get enough. Ryan becomes aware, with the very last part of himself that he has to spare, of a rhythmic rustling, and then he realizes Shane’s got his left hand in his pjs and he’s jerking himself off.

It’s this realization, that Shane’s so into this he couldn’t wait, that even _Shane’s_ control is cracking, which finishes it for Ryan. He starts to come. He wants to bring his hands down so badly, to wind his fingers in Shane’s hair and hold him there. Instead, still mindful of his arms, he grabs at his own hair and trusts Shane to bring him through it.

Shane does, of course, very capably. He swallows around Ryan and strokes him until he twitches away. When Ryan finally lets his arms fall and leans back on his elbows with a gasp, Shane stands up.

“Just stay—Ryan, can I?” he asks, his voice creaking desperately. He’s already got his pj bottoms down, hand moving fast on his dick. “Fuck, you’re so, that was.”

“Yeah, man, go nuts,” Ryan says. “Oh, wait, actually.”

He reaches out for Shane, his arm protesting at being asked to do yet more work tonight, and gets a hand on Shane. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but Shane’s already put in most of the necessary effort. Shane grabs for Ryan’s shoulder to steady himself, and in just a few pumps he’s groaning and coming all over Ryan’s collarbones.

“Wahew.”  Shane flops over on the bed, face-down.

“That’s a new feeling,” Ryan says. He touches his chest speculatively. “Of all the souvenirs to bring back from this trip, a pearl necklace was not on my radar.”

“It’ll go great with your new cowboy hat, you’ll be the fanciest cowboy in the,” Shane starts, and then he groans again, sounding as demolished as Ryan feels. “Oh fuck, that’s hot too.”

Ryan floats into the bathroom to clean up. He’s sort of aware of Shane floating around him, washing his hands and his face, foisting a bottle of water in Ryan’s hand, but mostly he’s just thinking about _sleep_. He feels exactly like he feels after he’s gone for a long run and really pushed his pace: exhausted, pleasantly sore, accomplished.

*

Shane’s already settled in bed again when Ryan returns from the bathroom. He pulls the covers back, indicating that Ryan should get in with him, and Ryan does.

“Now I’m planning to cuddle the crap out of you for between five and eight minutes,” Shane warns. “Just say the word if it’s, you know, bats.”

“It’s not bats,” Ryan says with a low chuckle. “It’s the absence of bats.”

He doesn’t hear the flapping any more. All he hears is Shane’s steady breathing in his ear, tucked up as he is tight and close behind him. All he smells is black pepper and coriander and, very faintly, sex. His mind’s a perfect blank slate, a banging-induced _tabula rasa_ as good as any he’s ever experienced.

“How’d I do?” Ryan asks sleepily. He knows it’s not cool to ask for a performance review, but he’s not cool and he’s never claimed to be. He really wants to know, and in the morning he’ll be too self-conscious to find out.

“You’re a natural. You take to me bossing you around like a duck to water.”

“We could try it again some time,” Ryan says. “Or even just, uh, the usual stuff. If you want.”

“The _usual_ stuff,” Shane rumbles. “You and me in a four-poster bed with white silk sheets, missionary-style, candles everywhere. In the background, the chorus of Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ swells as we climax together.”

“Oh my god,” Ryan says with a huff. “That’s _usual_ for you?”

“There’s a lot of spices in this Shane stew, baby! A new layer of flavor in every slurp, as you will discover.”

Anywhere from five to eight minutes later, Shane drops a kiss on his shoulder and pulls away to go to sleep. Ryan barely feels him move; he’s almost asleep already. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’s aware that he’s made a life-altering choice tonight that his brain will probably do its best to ruin for him in the near future. But for now, at least he’s no longer thinking about fuckin’ bats.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my dear Catt for the beta! Also: you may have noticed my other works are now archive locked. It's a thing I'm trying. I'll keep new stuff unlocked for a week or two, but eventually I will probably lock it.


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